A Not-Bad Badly Broken Code

I am rooting so hard for women in hip-hop, it’s not even funny. So much mainstream hip-hop is male-dominated, macho asshole bullshit (50 Cent and Eminem come to mind) and I find myself longing for a female perspective delivered in awesome rhymes over seriously heavy beats. If you recommend a female hip-hop artist to me, I will check her out without reservation. Because I want them to succeed. Not just a little, either. I want a woman who performs hip-hop the way Suzan-Lori Parks writes plays, which is the way John Coltrane played the saxophone (seriously, her plays  are – among other things – jazz. You can snap your fingers to that dialogue*). Is that a tall order? Sure. But life’s too short to accept mediocrity (which is why, incidentally, I don’t drink shitty beer. Life’s too fucking short. If you can’t afford the good stuff, don’t buy beer. And I don’t want to hear any wild accusations of elitism. Respect for craft is not elitism, it is the understanding of and appreciation for real art. Some people drink Budweiser and like Thomas Kinkade paintings. I drink Guinness and prefer the works of, say, James Ensor to the so-called Painter of Light, which is, I shit you not, really what Kinkade calls himself. The prick).

So where, in the broad spectrum of my extraordinarily high hopes, does A Badly Broken Code, the full-length debut by Dessa (born Margret Wander. She once dated fellow Doomtree artist and Linkin Park soundalike P.O.S. Okay, to be fair, he sounds a little smarter than Linkin Park, but the overall aesthetic strikes me the same way. Maybe punk and rap weren’t meant to go together, the Clash’s “Magnificent Seven” notwithstanding), land? She’s no Suzan-Lori Parks of hip-hop, but A Badly Broken Code is probably not best classified as a hip-hop album. Yes, Dessa raps on a lot of the tracks and graciously avoids some of the typical things that piss me off about hip-hop albums, namely skits and songs about what a badass MC she is (there is one song, “Crew,” which is about how awesome Doomtree is. I’m okay with that, because it’s showing respect for the people who allowed her to make and put out this record. In fact, more rappers should try showing gratitude instead of just bragging all the time. See Dessa’s fellow Minnesotan, Brother Ali, for other excellent examples of gratitude in hip-hop) but there’s some very captivating R&B-style singing on A Badly Broken Code (truly gorgeous harmonies adorn both “Poor Atlas” and “Into the Spin”) and some tracks possess a meter that shows Dessa’s spoken word roots pretty clearly. None of which is a bad thing, mind you, but it does muddy up the album’s clear distinction as a hip-hop record.

So let’s call it hip-hoppish and get down to whether or not A Badly Broken Code is a good album, whatever genre you or I or anyone cares to stamp on it. The answer is an overwhelming “mostly.” It’s not so bad that I can get away with saying, “More like a badly broken album!” and then guffawing myself into a coma. It’s not bad at all, really. Here’s the thing that seems to be troubling me about it and I just realized it this last time listening to it – I like all the bits where Dessa sings way better than the ones where she raps. Her lyrics are fine, her cadence and meter are usually okay, it’s just that part of me really likes the sound of her singing.

And it’s also that part of me wants the female equivalent of It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and I haven’t heard that yet (if you have, tell me what it is and I will listen to it and then either belligerently argue with you or belligerently agree with you). Dessa is probably never going to make that album because her musical curiosity pulls her in too many directions at once to have that kind of focused outrage and those kind of pounding beats. A Badly Broken Code doesn’t grab my attention the way my favorite hip-hop albums do, but it is a lovely listen with really ornate instrumental arrangements and better takes on the old themes of love, fidelity, loss of innocence, and death than your favorite emo band is likely to offer in their entire career (although “Matches to Paper Dolls” is a little too trite for my taste. The simile feels forced to me). All expectations aside, Dessa is an intelligent, strong-voiced woman with a wide range of talent. Like all good artists, she fearlessly risks pretension and melodrama in the attempt to tell her stories her way. Though Dessa has been praised for her dense, verbose lyrics, I would suggest that she work on finding a way to be erudite in a little tighter meter – it helps things flow a little better and, if you’re handy with a thesaurus, you can still get across the same intelligent content while preserving a true hip-hop hook. But maybe hip-hop hooks are not what Dessa is interested in and I will not try to mold her into my hip-hop heroine if that’s not what she wants to be. In which case, ladies, the job is still open.

*Okay. I’ve noticed in the last week that my spell-check on Gmail and now here on WordPress doesn’t like the proper spellings of words like dialogue and catalogue. They seem to prefer the aesthetically awful “catalog” and “dialog” which were not in common usage earlier in my lifetime. I can’t help but feel like you have a “dialog” if you grew up in America and still can’t really read or write English. Like maybe you think professional wrestling is real and the Marmaduke movie is gonna be hilarious.

David Byrne and Billy Bragg: How Well Are My Heroes Aging?

I used to get a lot of shit when I worked at Tower Records in Boston for liking Billy Bragg. Some of my co-workers would ridicule Mr. Bragg’s snotty British snarl on songs like “Help Save the Youth of America.” I had a few allies there, but for the most part, I was content to ambush people with Billy Bragg in the from Mermaid Avenue, his incredibly awesome recording of some lost Woody Guthrie lyrics (he did the album with Wilco and if you don’t own it, you’re missing one of the most amazing albums recorded in my lifetime, I shit you not). Every time I had Mermaid Avenue on in the store, someone would buy a copy.

Shortly before I left the East Coast (which was, sadly, shortly before Tower Records was wiped out), Billy Bragg reissued a bunch of his early stuff and put out a boxed set, which prompted me to wonder if a new Billy Bragg album wasn’t also in the works. Turns out it was and turns out it’s called Mr. Love and Justice and turns out it arrived earlier this year. It’s Billy Bragg’s least abrasive work to date, which might win him new fans and lose him some old ones. He’s at his most melodic and romantic on Mr. Love and Justice, which is to say he is at his most adult-contemporary.  The album is more about the love than the justice, which is not a criticism necessarily, but it does grind on one a bit to know that Billy Bragg posseses the razor-sharp wit we need here in 2008 to cut some of our more egregiously awful elected officials down to size but uses it only sparingly. But look: if Bragg spent 12 songs saying, “Man, the world is fucked up and the blame can be squarely laid upon corrupt leadership and apathetic citizenry,” you’d shoot yourself by the end of the set. Billy Bragg’s wide-eyed idealism is itself a romantic venture, so it only makes sense that he would ache for love as much as social change. Hence, the standout tracks on Mr. Love & Justice are, in descending order, “O Freedom,” (political – duh), “The Beach is Free” (political and romantic) and album opener “I Keep Faith” (romantic). The rest of the album is pretty good too – for those who long for the old days when Bragg was the only folk singer who eschewed the strummy acoustic vibe for the jangly solo electric guitar, you can check out the deluxe edition of Mr. Love and Justice which features “solo” versions of all the tracks, just the way Billy did it when he wasn’t looking for a new England.

Yeah, Mr. Love and Justice is Billy Bragg’s most FM-Radio album ever, but that’s not really hanging the sellout tag on him; you’re still not gonna see him on the red carpet at the fucking VMA’s. Dude’s still on solid ideological ground and, after three decades of fighting the good fight, I’ll give him a little break to wax romantic. It still beats the shit out of whatever Springsteen is doing now and Billy Bragg has aged better by far than, say, Eric Clapton. The important question here is: who’s gonna pick up the mantle when Billy Bragg is (god forbid) gone? There is one other ex-military Brit singer, but he’s James Fucking Blunt and that guy is not ever (ever!) gonna sing a song that would rock the Grey’s Anatomy soundtrack boat. So who’s left? Bloc Party might walk a similar path, so long as they can avoid another Weekend in the City (look for a review of Intimacy later this week).

David Byrne, one of the other great oddballs of all time, is back this year too, with another Brian Eno collaboration called Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. It’s like a gospel album for agnostics (how many gospel albums do you own that mention “when the angel fucks the whore”? Go on and count ‘em up. I’ll wait. Oh? You don’t have any? Odd.); it’s hopeful but not entirely innocent, melodic but not cloyingly grandiose. Byrne’s voice is a multi-faceted instrument and he uses it to great effect on Everything That Happens, keeping the overwhelmingly positive outlook of most of the lyrics from coming off like the score from a Disney flick.

The album opens with “Home,” which lets you know exactly what you’re in for: lots of harmonies, lilting instruments in the background, and Byrne waxing optimistic and world-weary within the same line: “Home/ with the neighbors fighting/ Home/ always so exciting”. You get the sense that Bryne doesn’t wish he was homeward bound quite as enthusiastically as Simon and Garfunkel did, but he’s still glad to be going.

Like Billy Bragg’s Mr. Love and Justice, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today can skirt the line of adult-contemporary radio rock, but its players (Eno’s music, for which Byrne wrote and performed the lyrics) usually hold it to the correct side of that line. Everything That Happens does feature some slow tunes that, at first listen, can sound awful similar, but Misters Eno and Byrne deliver them with an impressively earnest beauty for two guys who’ve been around as long as they have and, upon repeated listening, they kinda wash over you like a Gavin Bryars record.

Neither album is apt to make my best of 2008 list, but they’ve got some great songs between the pair of them that show an ability to age gracefully. Neither album feels like a last gasp before dying by either Byrne or Bragg – in fact, both albums feel like a new breath of life for each artist. Here’s hoping Bragg knocks one out of the park on his next outing, though I won’t suffer a McCain presidency to inspire it.

There’s No Beatles, Clash, Or Rolling Stones

There are very few bands you can listen to without spotting their influences. Scratch that. I can’t think of any. Even bands with a sound as distinctive as that of, say, The Flaming Lips, reveal their record collections to you if you pay attention. The real test, then, is whether or not your band can put a unique stamp on a great record collection. For example, no one will deny that Cream did amazing things with their influences – they fed Robert Johnson magic mushrooms and took him on a wild, psychedelic ride (for you youngsters in the crowd, this was waaaaaaaay back in the day, before Clapton started to suck as brutally as he sucks now). As a counterpoint, you can tell from listening to John Mayer that he owns and has committed to memory every single Stevie Ray Vaughan album. And he’s translated his love of SRV into… becoming a poor man’s Johnny Lang (for those of you who don’t know who Johnny Lang is, just understand that being any man’s Johnny Lang is unacceptable).

Any first listen of any given Radio America tune will betray a love of The Clash and The Beatles. The Radio Americans are not shy about their political leanings, but they understand that melody is a good thing. But The Beatles and The Clash are epic figures in our musical heritage and the brazen taking-up of their respective mantles is problematic. If you’re going to stand on a stage in 2008 (or “2007″, the lead-off track to Radio America’s new You Will Pay for This EP) and declare, “There’s no Beatles, Clash, or Rolling Stones/ and we’re finally on our own,” you’d better have the chops to back it up. Radio America has set these stakes for themselves and have rose to the occasion admirably.

Since 2006′s Raise High, the band has undergone some personnel shifts – Tom Stuart and Jesse Reno, original criminal masterminds for the group, are still present but have added Gabe Wilhelm and Robby Van Saders on, respectively, guitar and drums. The sound is still loud and brash, but there’s a new dynamic on You Will Pay for This – Radio America is stepping a little bit away from their punk rock roots without ever losing track of where they came from. The EP still bears the mark of some kids who have memorized London Calling but these kids are smart enough to know that, while imitation is a sincere form of flattery, a little goes a long way and too much makes for a boring listen. So You Will Pay for This starts off with vocals front and center: “Bones/On/Bones” starts off “2007″, which goes on to suggest that the Rolling Stones your alcoholic stepdad is paying $400 to see are not the Rolling Stones who gave us Exile On Main Street. “2007″ stakes Radio America’s claim on the flag of their forebears – for better or worse, these guys (originally from Worcester, MA but now hanging out in New York) are going to weld their punk politics to their pop sensibilities and it’s a good thing. Because it’s 2008: there’s no Clash (raise a toast to St. Joe Strummer) and there’s really not much of a Bad Religion anymore either.

“27 Octobre” follows “2007″ with Reno’s bass and Van Saders’ drums propelling the song under a Dick Dale guitar riff. And then in comes Stuart singing about the “deafening clash/ of riot gear” and buy the time he gets to the refrain, the backing vocals pop up (truth be told, Stuart’s never met a “bop-bop-ba-dudda-dudda” he didn’t like; see “Mahabharata” for keen examples of this). “27 Octobre” showcases the vocal dynamic between Stuart and Jesse Reno – Reno’s the growler, Stuart’s the crooner (for want of a better word – put it this way: Tom Stuart sounds more like Joey Ramone and Reno’s voice has evolved to a snarls like Tom Waits’ vocals on “Anywhere I Lay My Head.” Hmm… note to Radio America – round of beers on me on September 20th if Jesse sings “Anywhere I Lay My Head” during your set at Lobsterfest.). Stuart and Reno make great use of their respective voices all over You Will Pay for This, but never to greater effect than on “Battle Hymn,” the centerpiece of the EP and a song I’ve literally just listened to five times in a row… make that six.

“Battle Hymn,” starts off with a little pseudo-reggae lick and then jumps full bore into a loud-ass guitar squall. Then comes Reno, growling “hold on to courage/ hold on to pride”, building toward the chorus, warning a brave soldier not to scream, “there’s blood on my hands.” “Battle Hymn,” also features Stuart’s trademark pointedness: “Boy/ don’t you ever mix conviction/ with compassion” is a great lyric (although it would be helpful if it weren’t a Republican Party plank as well) that rivals his admonition to kids who “bleed red, white, and blue” to make sure they can reconcile their nations history with their beliefs on “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue” (from Raise High).

“Nazarene” follows at break-neck speed; the scene unfolds at a nightclub, a “den of vice and sin” where the holy rollers are “begging you to welcome them back in” but the kids aren’t cut out for salvation – they’re just ordinary Nazarenes. The point of the song seems to be that Jesus went out for a pack of smokes 2000 years ago and, would ya lookit the time, he just hasn’t made it back yet. And he’s unlikely to, no matter how the holy rollers “compliment or spin.” The song features a breakdown that is an instrumental nod to “Death on the Stairs,” by The Libertines (this is the kind of pop culture reference that pervades Radio America’s catalog; little guitar licks here and there that call to their influences but only the musically well-read will catch them. If you listen to “(Raise) Higher,” the 10 minute epic from Raise High, you’ll notice a guitary nod to “Marquee Moon” by Television. Or you won’t.).

The last new tune on You Will Pay for This (it closes with a live version of “Mahabharata”) is “Dead Man Rock (Pistolero)”, Radio America’s modern spaghetti-western soundtrack song (apparently Ennio Morricone has joined Strummer/Jones and Lennon/McCartney in the Radio America pantheon of heroes). “Dead Man Rock” marks Radio America’s furthest departure from the sound of Raise High, proving that they’ve expanded their horizons with no loss of quality, asking “How many people/ will honestly teach you/ to stand up and fight for your rights?”

Overall, You Will Pay For This marks a new and exciting direction for Radio America and will hopefully garner them a little more widespread attention (although they’re getting rave concert reviews on the East Coast, I’m very excited to see them coming to LA next month. Radio America is exactly what a city that still loves Motley Crue needs right now). You can still spot their influences in every song, but what you can’t do is deny the earnestness of their intentions, the cleverness of their lyrics, and the volume of their awesome. To Tom, Jesse, Gabe, and Robby – big ups to ya, see you next month, and I’m totally serious about the “Anywhere I Lay My Head” thing.